Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Teachers shortage hurting Tanzania

In Summary

According to a UNESCO report Tanzania needs to recruit at least 406,600 new teachers by 2030

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By The Citizen Reporter

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania is one of the top ten countries globally with the highest projection of total number of teachers who have to be recruited by 2030.

According to the new report released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report on World Teachers’ Day, Tanzania needs to recruit at least 406,600 new teachers by 2030.

However, lack of funding and low production of teachers from higher learning institutions, among other reasons, are cited as major challenges facing the teaching profession.

In Tanzania, training a teacher from nursery to university costs Sh100 million. The country has a shortage of 26,000 teachers, according to the ministry of Education and Vocational Training.

According to UNESCO’s report, closely following Tanzania is Uganda, which stands as the tenth most needy country in teacher recruitment. According to the statistics, Uganda needs at least 372,800 new teachers by 2030.

Other African countries leading the league of ten most needy countries are Nigeria at number four and Democratic Republic of Congo at number seven. The new data released by UNESCO shows a chronic lack of trained teachers in many countries.

Without action, it would be impossible to get all children into school and learning by 2030. In total more than 27 million teachers would be needed to achieve universal primary education by 2030.

The report also shows that in the rush to fill this gap, many countries are recruiting new teachers with little training.

In the past decade, countries have made great efforts to steadily increase the supply of teachers.